Boy Finds Mummified Body Hanging in Closet
A boy found a mummified body hanging in the closet of a vacant house in Dayton, Ohio this week, according to reports. The body of Edward Brunton, 53, had been hanging in the closet for close to five years and had dried out, investigators believe.
The boy who found the mummified body had been curiously looking around the neighborhood and came across the abandoned house. When he found the body, he left and told his mother, although the 12-year-old may not have known what he saw because of Brunton's mummified condition.
"When he first came across it, he thought it was a dummy, or a mannequin or something," Michelle McGrath, the child's mother, told WLTX news. "He found a body, and I said 'wait what?'"
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Police were called to the scene to find Brunton's body still hanging from a belt in a closet. Investigators estimated that he had hung himself during the winter, which dried out the skin tissue and made sure insects didn't get to the body.
"It is very unique to find mummified remains like this, five years old," Kent Harshberger, the Montgomery County, Ohio coroner, explained.
The body wasn't found for so long because "nobody was looking for him," Ken Batz, the director of the coroner's office, told the Associated Press. Brunton had been homeless until he inherited money from his mother in 2009 and bought the house for $10,000. Shortly thereafter he allegedly committed suicide, but he was estranged from his brother in 2008, so no one filed a missing persons report.
Even neighbors were unaware that anyone had been living in the rundown home— some complained that the grass was hardly cut, so the city of Dayton had someone mow the lawn occasionally.
"I didn't realize there was anybody in the house," said Alberta Ballard, who has lived across the street for 40 years.
"I think it's disturbing that the neighbors didn't smell it, they didn't call, that people aren't more involved in their neighborhood," McGrath added.
Batz says this is the first time investigators have found mummified remains in many years.
